5 Overly Ambitious Halloween Makeup Tutorials

Halloween is approaching, and thousands of women are taking to the YouTube search bar to find the perfect makeup tutorial.

Are you a world-class artist? Can you manipulate shadows to transform your face into a completely different face? Me neither. But some of the more skilled makeup gurus of the YouTube community want you to feel included anyway, so here are five Halloween “tutorials” that you almost certainly can’t replicate.

1. “Fawn/Satyr Fantasy Makeup Tutorial for Halloween” by albinwonderland. The always put-together Angelina takes us on a 19-minute journey to look like, in her own words, “a fawn-inspired forest animal… thing.” The process requires elaborate shading and contouring, like seventy eyeliners, and more patience than I will ever have. Still, the finished product is amazing enough that it may be worth the labor. Maybe.

2. “The Beautiful Death” by Michelle Phan.Michelle is famous for her soothing voice, stunning artistry, and batshit crazy costume makeup. This year’s look, inspired by Mexican sugar skulls, is unbelievably pretty… and requires you to rub a glue stick on your eyebrows. I don’t personally live in a universe where I could sacrifice an expensive foundation brush to blue face paint, but I’m glad Michelle does. This looks is seriously gorgeous.

3. “Trippy ‘Face in a Face’ Halloween Make-up” by Promise Phan. Since she’s Michelle Phan’s sister-in-law, it doesn’t surprise me that Promise has crazy makeup skills. And, apparently, crazy amounts of time on her hands. This look, which she describes as “kind of like the movie Inception, but it’s like a face in a face,” only asks that you have an incredibly steady hand, access to ten million eyeshadow colors, and the ability to draw a photorealistic human face on your own cheek.

4. “Halloween edition: Creepy broken doll makeup tutorial” by KandiceXOX1. In another video that manages to make me feel weird for having never put a glue stick on my forehead, Kandice shows us how to change the shape of our lips, make our eyes four times bigger, and feel totally inadequate.

Please please please do NOT do the sugar skull makeup! Dia de los Muertos is totally different from Halloween and doing that makeup when you don’t have Mexican/central American heritage is really awful and and appropriative!

Anika

Okay, I know several Mexican people who have actually protested against people like you, who try deeming sugar skull costumes as cultural appropriation. It is MEANT TO BE A COSTUME. Dia de los Muertos is celebrated at approximately the same time as Halloween. Cultural appropriation does not mean dressing up as another cultures version of a costume (which it totally is– JUST A COSTUME.) Honestly, celebrating other countries’ cultures isn’t a bad thing. I’m Indian and I have zero issue with people dressing up in Indian outfits